An inland postcard from R.I. Route 102

November 22, 2009|Paul E. Kandarian, Globe Correspondent

(Page 3 of 3)

Down in Exeter dwells a bit of chilling history. At the Chestnut Hill Baptist Church Cemetery lies the body of Mercy Brown, an alleged vampire whose body was exhumed in 1892, and her heart removed and burned. More pleasantly, just down the road is Blueberry Hill Farm, a working 150-acre farm that is fronted on Route 102 and where you’ll find Blueberry Hill Farm store and Clark Whitford, 77, who opened the place 35 years ago.

Run by Whitford and his son Jason, the store sells some convenience items and coffee and pastry in the morning, but mostly hay and grain out back. The elder Whitford is soft-spoken and gracious, telling visitors about Blueberry Hill’s heyday as a dairy farm. They still have cows, he said, mostly for shows. Inside the dark store are all manner of photos of dairy days long gone. A sign on a beam reads: “My cow died so I don’t need your bull.’’

But bull you’ll find here, admitted Whitford with a laugh, mostly from the elderly men who routinely gather outside on the porch, or inside on raggedy chairs. Many of them are farmers in bib overalls. When you pull up they make you feel as if you’ve just driven onto a page of Yankee magazine.

“All I know is cows; my father had them, I had them, my son has them,’’ said Whitford, who also worked for many years as a state maintenance man, pointing to a dusty stack of old dairy industry magazines. “Still do shows, some.’’

Nearing the end of Route 102, I drive through busy North Kingstown, past McKay’s Front Porch, which sells outdoor furniture, including Adirondack chairs - and where on the front lawn is a giant, 10-foot-tall model for show only and in which many families have posed for photos.

You have the unmistakable sense of getting closer to the ocean here when you see things like a mailbox held up by a large wooden fisherman, screaming-yellow slicker and all, and a yard festooned with a garish assortment of brightly colored buoys, reportedly a source of consternation to the local car dealer adjacent to it.

And though Route 102 ends where Route 1A begins, it’s worth taking a short left onto Brown Street, the picturesque road that juts into historic Wickford Village, at the end of which you’ll find The Book Garden, a small, cramped bookstore loaded with great reads, old and new. As my day ended, I thought of something Whitford had told me, that when you do what you love, you never work a day in your life.

Sitting down to a midafternoon sandwich at the nearby wharf-side Beach Rose Café with a local newspaper, I realized the man could not have been more right.

Paul E. Kandarian can be reached at kandarian@globe.com.